Strobilomyces Strobilaceus.
Black spore-prints
A reproduction of one of these prints is shown in [Plate 38], the white reticulation representing the contact of the tube orifices with the paper, each tube depositing its dot composed of spores, the depth of color increasing in proportion to the time involved in the deposit. A single mushroom will yield a half-dozen or more prints. This fungus dries readily, and may be kept indefinitely.
SUSPICIOUS BOLETI
Boletus felleus—B. alveolatus
Maligned species
A daring pioneer mycophagist
In [Plate 24] are shown two examples of the Boleti which have commonly been accounted poisonous—B. felleus and B. alveolatus—and, in the absence of absolutely satisfactory assurance to the contrary, it is safer from our present point of view to consider them still as suspicious and to give them a wide berth. There can be no doubt but that the popular condemnation of the Boleti has been altogether too sweeping. The gradual accession of many questionable species to the edible list of Messrs. McIlvaine and Palmer and other daring mycophagists is a sufficient attestation of this fact. Thus subtomentosus and cyanescens, already described, always heretofore branded as reprobates, are now redeemed from obloquy, and even the universal ill-repute of the B. satanas, with its pale pileus and blood-red pores, has not frightened the indefatigable Captain McIlvaine from a personal challenge and encounter with this lurid specimen, with the result that the formidable "Satanas" has proved anything but deserving of its name—not half so lurid as it has been painted; indeed, it has been even pronounced "the best of them all." Of course there's no telling to what extent the considerations of contrast, through surprise and the consequent demoralization on the contingents of the personal equation, may have influenced the captain's discrimination, but it certainly would appear, to put it negatively, that even the ill-favored world-renowned B. satanas has apparently been freed from aspersion as an enemy of mankind.